Twenty years ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a new rule for cities with dirty air, such as Charlotte: Show that your road-building plans will complement efforts to clean the air – or risk losing critical highway construction dollars.

But today the federal process is full of loopholes, the Observer has found.

City transportation planners changed data that essentially took one in three cars off the road, enabling them to show less pollution. They also have made overly optimistic forecasts about how often people would use mass transit.

And despite evidence that building more highways causes people to drive farther, the city has told the EPA the opposite: Building billions of dollars of new highways will cause Charlotteans to drive less, and create less smog, than if they weren't built.

Those questionable projections have helped keep highway dollars flowing to Charlotte.

City transportation planners acknowledge that their pollution estimates have turned out to be low. But they say they have complied with all state and federal requirements.

Mecklenburg County's air-quality director, Don Willard, said the EPA's rules are good on paper, but in practice are “divorced from reality.”

Charlotte's air is cleaner than a decade ago, mostly due to vehicles that emit less pollution. But the American Lung Association said in April that Charlotte had the nation's 8th-worst ground-level ozone problem.

Ground-level ozone, or smog, causes wheezing, coughing and chest pain, and respiratory infections. A survey in 2006 by Mecklenburg's Health Department found that emergency-room treatments for respiratory problems increased on bad-air days, said Stephen Keener, the health department's medical director.

“We promised the people we'd have cleaner air when we made these projections,” said David Farren of the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill. “But it's unfortunate they'd rather jiggle the model than do something to improve public health.”

The EPA didn't intend for cities with air pollution to stop building roads. Its goal was for them to evaluate which projects would best relieve congestion, while not significantly increasing how far people drive and how much they pollute.

Charlotte has fulfilled part of the EPA's vision by investing in transit, bike paths, sidewalks and other programs to cut down on tailpipe emissions.

But it hasn't scrutinized the billions of dollars of planned highways as the EPA intended. Highways that critics say will worsen air quality – such as the planned Garden Parkway in Gaston County and the proposed Monroe Bypass – have been given the green light by Charlotte.

Charlotte Department of Transportation planner Norm Steinman admitted that some of the city's projections weren't accurate, but said the city has followed the EPA's rules.

“We have done what we're legally required to do,” said Steinman.

Over the last generation, air-quality nationwide has improved, mostly due to cleaner cars and trucks that emit far fewer nitrogen oxides than vehicles built even a decade ago. Nitrogen oxides combine with sunlight to form ground-level ozone.

But in Charlotte, some of the improvements from cleaner vehicles have been offset by the region's population growth and an increase in how many miles the average Charlottean drives. Vehicles account for up to 70 percent of Mecklenburg's ozone-causing pollutants, according to a county estimate.

Charlotte can still have unhealthy air during hot, dry summers – as it did during the drought of 2007.

Charlotte's current three-year ozone level is .094 parts per million. That's above the current standard of .084 and a more stringent standard of .075 that cities must meet early next decade.

The EPA has set a spring 2010 deadline for Charlotte to reach the current standard, and for the city to show that its transportation plans complement state efforts to reduce ozone.

The EPA has discussed reclassifying Charlotte from having a “moderate” ozone problem to “serious,” which would bring more regulations on industry. There are only two cities that the EPA has labeled worse than serious – Los Angeles and Houston.

But this summer has been much better, due to relatively cool temperatures and rain in May and June that washed away pollutants.

Because Charlotte hasn't had any serious air-quality problems this summer, the city and state are hoping the EPA will grant the region a one-year extension from having to meet clean-air standards.

The idea behind transportation conformity is simple, but the math is complex.

The EPA requires cities with air-quality problems to estimate their future tailpipe emissions by projecting what kind of vehicles will be on the road, how far we'll drive, and how fast. They analyze how new transportation projects will affect those travel patterns.

When Charlotte wrote its first conformity report in 1998, the city had a problem: Its own estimates for how far Charlotteans drove showed far more pollution than the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources had budgeted.

The city lowered its estimate of how many miles are driven in Mecklenburg.

City officials said the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the N.C. Department of Transportation urged them to use an NCDOT estimate, which showed Charlotteans drove about 30 percent fewer miles.

That showed dramatically lower pollution over the next 20 years, allowing the region to keep its highway dollars.

“We wouldn't have made it without that,” said Joe McLelland, a planner with the Charlotte Department of Transportation.

The problem: Those lower mileage estimates have turned out to be inaccurate. The state now uses a new computer model that shows Charlotteans drive far more than they originally projected.

But Charlotte planners used the DOT's lower estimates through 2007, which helped them get a green light to build all of their planned roads.

The EPA later questioned why Charlotte was using the lower mileage estimate, said Janice Godfrey, an environmental engineer with the Division of Air Quality.

She said the problem stemmed from the Division of Air Quality being uncertain of which estimate to use when creating its ozone-reduction plan. In the early 1990s, the NCDOT urged the division to use its lower estimates.

Charlotte also used overly optimistic projections in other areas.

In 1999, for instance, Charlotte planners predicted the city would have three rapid transit lines operating by 2005. The EPA has praised Charlotte's transit plans, which are designed to get people out of their cars, and to have people living close to train stations. Both will reduce how much people drive.

In reality, Charlotte's first light-rail line opened in 2007. The Charlotte Area Transit System probably won't be able to build a second line until 2015, and a third line may not be built at all.

“A lot of local governments were just trying to dodge the bullet,” said Molly Diggins, state director of the N.C. Sierra Club, about meeting the EPA rules. “They hoped conformity would go away.”

A flaw in the EPA's rules, critics say, is that the agency doesn't require cities to project how new highways will influence where people choose to live and work.

Charlotte hasn't included that in its projections.

Two planned highways that avoided such scrutiny are the Monroe Connector/Bypass and the Garden Parkway, toll roads planned for Union and Gaston counties early next decade.

If both highways are built, they will cut commute times for some residents. They also will unclog some bottlenecks, allowing people to spend less time in stop-and-go traffic.

Both benefits improve air quality.

But those short-term improvements can be offset by sprawl.

The Garden Parkway, a 22-mile toll road planned for south Gaston County, will spark a development boom, developers and road boosters agree.

The EPA in July criticized the toll road, saying in a letter to the N.C. Turnpike Authority it would “invariably increase vehicle commutation distances and result in increased air pollution emissions.”

But two years ago, in its conformity report to the EPA, the Charlotte Department of Transportation made a different case. Planners forecast that if the Garden Parkway and other Gaston road projects are built by 2020, Gaston's drivers will drive fewer miles than if they weren't built.

The U.S. DOT approved that report.

When asked about that projection, Steinman of CDOT said in an interview those highways will likely encourage development farther from the city, increasing how far people drive.

But he said the city didn't include that in its conformity report because the federal government didn't require it.

The EPA said conformity helps planners make environmentally sound decisions and it doesn't allow cities to “game the system.”

The agency also said a city such as Charlotte could project how highways will influence where people live and work, though it hasn't required it.

Dick Schutt, who heads the EPA's Atlanta office for air-quality, said trying to project how highways influence where people live could make for a better model.

“But it's hard – we don't know where the growth is going to go,” Schutt said. “Overall, I think this is a good system. We have had a lot of growth in the Southeast, and the air has gotten cleaner.”

Some critics ask, however, whether conformity has become just an exercise with no repercussions.

The federal government hasn't frozen any city's highway money for an extended period of time.

David Hartgen, professor emeritus of transportation at UNC Charlotte, said he thinks conformity is a waste of time. Cleaner cars are far more important than changing transportation plans, he said. “It's just a game. The whole purpose is so the money continues to flow,” Hartgen said. “Every city intends to kick the can down the road, so technology can take care of the problem.”

“Everyone wants to build their roads,” said Willard, Mecklenburg's air-quality director. “There is a local interest, there is a state interest, and a private business interest. Conformity is a process. Whether it's had any impact or not, I don't know.”

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